BoloOfEarth

I typed in the rest of my quotes yesterday but when I went to post it didn't connect and I lost all of it. So here goes attempt #2: At first, Maker was taking on Artemis and Apollo all alone, but then Pops teleported the rest of the team there, and the battle was joined. Honey Badger ran over and punched Artemis, stunning her. As HB was grabbing and squeezing her, Hermes ran up. Hermes: Just like you superhero types, keeping us down. The government creates you supers out in Area 51, don't they? Honey Badger: No, I'm from Zone 53. Hermes: Zone 53?!?! Damn, I ain't heard of that one before! (pulls out a notebook and writes some notes, then looks back at HB holding Artemis) Bro, she's gonna be pissed at how you're holding her. HB: Is she your girlfriend? Hermes: No, man, she's not my type. Aphrodite, now she is my type. HB: (OOC) Is Hermes going to attack me anytime soon? GM: Naw. He's just chatting. He did a full move to get here from the other side of the PRIMUS base. GM: When I found the picture for Hermes (below) and saw his pose and the expression on his face, I knew what his Psych Comp would be: Bat-S*** Crazy. He has KS: Conspiracy Theories. After Maker's EM blasts fail to get much damage past Apollo's force field, Malarky hits the New God with a thorny Entangle. Apollo (who was flying up quite a ways over an apartment building) responds by turning off his flight, trusting his force field and the entangle to absorb most of the damage of impact. The impact on the roof does destroy the entangle, but it also does enough damage that Apollo smashes through the roof into the apartment below. Maker runs over to the hole. Maker: Can I see Apollo and take some shots at him? GM: Yes, but he can also see you and take shots at you. HB: Be careful. 'Cause you know shots can cause autism. Athena began hitting Nexus and Malarky with Mind Blasts, so Shadowboxer created a darkness field around her. Athena responds by flying up out of the darkness... making her visible to Pops, who teleports her into the trunk of a passing car. Nexus: But... she's getting away! Pops: I don't care, so long as she's not able to do her mental mojo on us. Heracles arrives, and is standing at the base of the building, while most of the action is taking place up on the rooftop. So Honey Badger leaps down, intent on doing a move-through on Heracles, but Heracles sees him coming and raises his shield to take the brunt of the damage. HB: Who does he think he is, Captain America? HB: So, you're Heracles. Are you the guy who loses his strength if his hair is cut? Heracles: (shaking his hair out) It is rather spectacular, isn't it? The two bricks trade blows, resulting in HB getting smashed through the building's brick wall, and Heracles getting knocked through the side of a passing U-Haul panel truck. The startled truck driver pulls over, and Heracles forces open the back door of the truck to find himself facing Nexus. Heracles: Well, hello, beautiful! What's a lovely lady like you doing here? GM: When he smiles, you hear "TING!" as the light reflects off his teeth. Nexus: (eyeroll) Back when the team first turned on the borrowed broadcast power gear while creating a homing device, Maker had felt "really good." But it wasn't until the battle that she learned the actual effects of the New Gods' broadcast power truck. GM: Maker, you recover 12 STUN and 30 END. That's not you taking a recovery - that's from the broadcast power, since your powers are electromagnetic in nature. Maker: Cool! That brings my END up to full, and undoes most of my STUN damage. Pops: (realizing the implication for the New Gods) Not cool! That's cheating! (looks sternly at Shadowboxer and Maker) Wasn't somebody supposed to take out the broadcast power truck already? After Shadowboxer finally shut down the broadcast power, the New Gods were soon rendered unconscious. Nexus: Shouldn't PRIMUS be here by now? They're only a few blocks away! GM: I don't recall any of you calling them, not even to let them know the New Gods were planning to attack their base. Nexus: Oops! (looks chagrined) Um, I'll call them now. The resident of the apartment that Apollo crashed into comes out to hassle the heroes, asking who is going to pay for the damage to his place. HB: Call your insurance company. You can tell them it was an act of god... literally.

Thus showing my complete lack of familiarity with video games. I'll look for a different picture.

Sorry - this is the first time I've checked this thread in a few days. Hopefully this wasn't based on an existing character from a video game or movie I'm not familiar with.

Our Sunday night gaming group alternates games (I run Champions and a friend runs D&D 4.0), and the other GM asked me to run a second week in a row. Unfortunately, I wasn't really ready and didn't come up with a solid idea until sometime Saturday. So the villains and adventure were a bit rushed and slapped together at the last minute. I decided to update a villain group that I hadn't used since 2004: the New Gods (artificial bioforms based on the Greek pantheon). Also, the player with the mentalist character (Circe) wasn't able to attend. Pops: I've got Circe's character sheet. Malarky: So, since Andy's not here, what embarrassing stuff should we put Circe through this week? GM: Actually, other than maybe some stuff at the very beginning of the adventure, Circe's going to be unavailable for most of the adventure. (pause) But I think she'll enjoy her new career as a stripper. GM: So, Dr. Stevens has been asked to give the keynote address at a science and technology symposium in Philadelphia. (looks pointedly at Pops' player) Pops: Who the heck is Dr. Stevens? GM: (confused pause) Isn't that Pops' secret identity? Pops: (looks at character sheet) Oh! So it is! Stevens is talking to another scientist (Dr. McCormick) that he hasn't seen for a while. Rumor has it the scientist was working on a top-secret government project. As they're talking, Dr. Stevens notices some odd light-warping effect on the wall a half-dozen meters away. He quickly realizes that someone is moving along the wall using a chameleon form of invisibility. GM: I assume you're trying to be subtle and not let on that you've seen them. Pops: That's correct. (to Dr. McCormick) Do you know of anybody trying to attack or kidnap you? McCormick: (confused) Noooo... Pops: Because there's somebody trying to sneak up on us invisible. GM: (rolls some dice, getting a not-so-good result) Dr. McCormick spins around, saying "Where?!" Pops: (facepalms) As Pops drags McCormick away, the foes become visible. They appear to be military types, but without insignia of any sort. The two scientists are trying to get lost in the crowd and make their way out of the convention center. Pops: What have you been working on that would make somebody come after you? McCormick: You don't know they're after me. They might be after you. Pops: You don't want to mess with me. I took out someone with a f--king toaster. Meanwhile, back in Boston, Maker (in her secret identity as Li Jenkins, a NASA astronaut who worked on UNTIL's Gateway space station) is contacted by UNTIL for debriefing about her recent run-in with Wight, who is a Russian cosmonaut (Andrei Vyelov) that everybody thought died after an incident outside Gateway that caused his body to re-enter Earth's atmosphere. UNTIL Capt. Roe: You'll be contacted shortly by an UNTIL investigator, Lt. Ingrid Bruckert. Honey Badger: (OOC) Frau Bruckert! (horses' whinny) GM: (to Maker) You know that random name booklet you got for me from GenCon way back when? I just opened it to a page and pointed to a name on that page, figuring that would be the country of origin and name for the UNTIL person. When I saw Bruckert, I pretty much knew how this was going to go down. Lt. Bruckert: Prior to the incident of May 17, what contact have you had with Andrei Vyelov? Maker: The last time I saw him was the day he supposedly died. Bruckert: Vyelov arranged specifically to go on that spacewalk with you. Why was that? Maker: You'd have to ask him. Maybe because he was a lecherous jerk. Bruckert: Other individuals have said that you and he were... involved, that you were in a relationship. Maker: They would be wrong. (pause) Who said that, by the way? Brucker: (thin, humorless smile; doesn't answer) Maker: (OOC) When I find out which joker thought telling her that would be a fun joke, I'm going to pull a prank on them... Malarky: (OOC) Admit it, when Vyelov's maneuvering jets fired and he started spinning out of control, you grabbed the tether just long enough to make sure he was headed for atmospheric re-entry... Bruckert: Those are all the questions I have. For now. Maker: Well, have a nice trip... Frau Bruckert. Honey Badger: (OOC horse's whinny) Bruckert: Please ask your friend to stop doing that. It is very irritating. We briefly discussed the superhero team's ongoing lack of a name. GM: If you don't come up with a name, you'll end up with something like Boston Area Super-Heroes, or BASH. Maker: I'm good with that. GM: Or maybe it'll be Massachusetts United Super-Heroes. How does MUSH sound? Honey Badger: Name us what you want. Honey Badger don't care. Back to the main plot. Pops researches and finds out the attackers at the symposium match the troopers employed by Project: Cadmus and their New Gods. Note that the MC Protectors was a prior PC hero team, who had a small base in Millennium City but their real base was a volcano lair in the South Pacific, accessed by teleportation. GM: Cadmus was taken down by the Millennium City Protectors about ten years ago. According to media reports all the New Gods, being artificial bioforms, were shut down and... dismantled.. for study. Unfortunately, the Protectors were one of the teams that disappeared in the Cross-Rip a few months back, so you can't get any other info from them. Shadowboxer: What about the Champions? They were based in Millennium City. I'd bet the Protectors shared info with them. GM: You contact Jaguar, who came out of retirement to rebuild the Champions after his former teammates disappeared in the Cross-Rip. He can give you some info on Project: Cadmus' use of broadcast electricity to help power the New Gods, but the Champions don't have schematics or anything. He says he heard a rumor that the Protectors had a secret base somewhere, so anything they had on it is probably there. (pause) I don't recall if the Champions ever visited your former team's volcano lair. Shadowboxer: I'd hope so. They were our guests at a luau there. The team visits the mothballed Protectors base in Millennium City to use the teleporter to get to the volcano lair. Malarky: Does anybody know how to use a teleporter? Honey Badger: Well, there's three sliders. Just make sure you move them all up or down at the same time, and you're good to go. Shadowboxer: (to Pops) Do you know how to operate a teleporter? Pops: Given that all my powers are based on teleportation, I sure hope so. While researching the New Gods, Shadowboxer realized that he had seen Apollo (in civilian clothing) near the PRIMUS base in Boston. So after borrowing the former Cadmus broadcast energy equipment from the Protectors' base and building a tracking/homing device, Shadowboxer is driving around the city in secret ID in his cab hoping to locate a broadcast power truck. The rest of the team is discussing whether they're all riding along with him. GM: There's six of you, so there's not really room inside the cab for all of you. Honey Badger: Do I have to ride in the trunk again? Maker: Honey Badger don't care - what does it matter? They locate the truck, and using Shadowboxer's shadow-sight/hearing to eavesdrop inside, the heroes discover that the New Gods are gearing up to attack the PRIMUS base. So Shadowboxer (in his cab) and Maker (flying overhead cloaked) are preparing to take down the broadcast power truck while the rest of the team heads toward the PRIMUS base to stop the New Gods. Unfortunately for the heroes, Apollo is near the broadcast power truck and can detect Invisibility to Sight, so he spots Maker and calls the rest of the New Gods back to the truck, and the battle goes down there. More to follow

Dr. Helena St. Thomas was a volcanologist working in Italy when she got a little too close to a steaming-hot caldera, slipped, and fell in. Her horrified colleagues tried to save her, but were unable to even retrieve her body. Their theory was that her body must have gotten pulled under a rocky outcropping, but the truth was that Dr. St. Thomas was literally boiled alive and her life energy absorbed into the volcano. She emerged months later, but she was unrecognizable. Calling herself Pyroclast, she takes the form of a pyroclastic flow - a fast-moving cloud of hot gas and rock that can reach temperatures up to 1,000 degrees C. She can also take a more diffuse, larger form (pictured) that, while not nearly as hot as her more compact form, is still plenty dangerous. The agony of her ordeal has driven her insane, and she seems intent on causing widespread death and destruction wherever she can.

I don't think she's a physicist - I've always thought of her as a bio-scientist, more an MD than an engineer type. She's the Simmons to Cisco's Fitz. That said, she was working at a particle accelerator and a singularity is the sort of thing you'd think would have been mentioned at some point in the past, at least in passing. Asking that question really should have been handed off to one of the non-STAR Labs people. Meta-thinking, they need someone to ask questions like that for the audience's sake, and having it always be Joe would get tedious.

LOL. Kinda lacking in dramatic tension, though, isn't it?

She refuses to teach anybody whose name isn't Art.

I'm not positive, but I believe they think Barry deserves better than her, or at least someone more in line with his intellect and interests. I know my daughter seemed okay with the thought of Felicity, or even Caitlin, as a romantic partner for Barry. My daughter has pointed out that Iris doesn't seem to have any friends other than Barry. (One time when Iris called Barry her "best friend", my daughter scoffed, "of course he's your best friend... he's your only friend.") In fairness, I don't think we've seen or heard of any of Eddie's friends, or Joe's friends either. Barry has Caitlin, Cisco, Felicity, Oliver... most of whom are also friends with each other apart from Barry. Lately they've showed Iris and Caitlin being friendly (but not necessarily what I'd call true friends), but mainly Iris comes across as the fifth wheel.

My daughter and her friends love The Flash but hate Iris with a passion. Yesterday, I pointed out to her that "West-Allen" doesn't absolutely mean that Iris marries Barry. Maybe she marries his second cousin, Larry Allen, who works at the DMV in Gotham City and has been nicknamed "the Slowest Man Alive". In deference to those who haven't watched the finale yet, I'll hold off on posting my thoughts for a few days.

(Maybe I'm taking "cow-boy" in a different direction than DT intended...) Mike "Oxbow" Bowers is the team's brick and likes to say he's "stronger than a dozen ox and twice as tough." Since his mutation includes thick hair all over his body and horns curving up from the sides of his head, Oxbow has had to deal with more than his share of teasing and prejudice throughout his life, which has given him a rather short fuse. Unfortunately, that short fuse led to a bar brawl that left an off-duty sheriff's deputy crippled for life. Rather than go to prison, Oxbow ran off. Since his horns, hair and general big-ness makes Oxbow rather conspicuous, he turned to crime to make ends meet, and eventually ended up in the Magnificent Seven.

Her life's savings amount to a pair of "granny panties", a wad of pre-chewed bubble-gum, and a Justin Bieber CD. NT: What actually happened to Old Widow McGillicudy's late husband?

You might justify a hypnotic lightshow - an AOE mental Entangle or Mind Control. You could also pull off a "Darkness" field, the SFX of which is that the light in the area is too bright to see through (maybe with -1/4 Limitation of Doesn't work vs. 7+ points Flash Defense vs. Sight). Of course, the more you bend the Radiance SFX to allow for different powers, the harder it will be to justify Very Limited Class limitation at -1.

Part Three of Typhoid Dee: The CDC says that they need Pigeon (as Patient Zero) to better concoct a cure to the disease. With their police connections, the heroes learn that Pigeon is a girl named Diane Carvey with a juvie record, but nothing they find can help them locate where she might be now. Pops: We could dress up as old men, go to the park, and throw bread crumbs on the ground. She's bound to show up. They also learn that Pigeon is part of a group of freaks / society rejects known as Vermin, whose other members are Cockroach, Flea, Mink, Gopher, Weasel, and Willard (who can summon a rat pack). Honey Badger: They may be named Vermin, but I'm calling them "lunch." After learning that witnesses had overheard Pigeon tell Wight he's a "freak like us" and tried to get him to join Vermin, Circe heads to PRIMUS to see if Wight knows where Pigeon might be holed up. GM: Are you going to tell PRIMUS you want to read his mind? Circe: No. I speak Russian. I'm just telling them that I want to talk to him. GM: Okay, they'll let you talk to him over the intercom, while he's still in the cell. Circe: Can I see him? Nexus: They should have a camera on him in the cell. GM: Sure, but Circe's powers won't work over a video feed. She needs direct line of sight. Circe: I could use Mind Scan to lock on... GM: You want to scan the PRIMUS base to lock onto a prisoner in a super-cell? Think it through. Circe: ... yeah, probably not a good idea. After Circe points out that Wight's sickness can also be cured if they capture Pigeon, the Russian relents and gives them a location: a deserted factory on the south side. With building blueprints, a bunch of police and PRIMUS agents as backup, and a combination of Circe's Mind Scan and Shadowboxer's Shadow Sight (Clairsentience) to pin down the specific locations of the members of Vermin, the heroes are ready to go in. Since Weasel (a mentalist) and Flea (a shrinker) are both in the same room, the heroes decide they are the first targets. Circe: (herself a mentalist) We need to take out Weasel first. Because mentalists are sooo evil. Malarky: Before we go in, do you want me to cast a spell on all of you? Honey Badger: Are we all gonna become frogs? Gopher is actually about six meters underground, in a burrow he dug out along with a network of tunnels under the factory. Shadowboxer uses his Shadow Sight to see what the gadgeteer is up to. GM: He's working on some device, you're not sure what, while humming. Shadowboxer: What song? GM: (Hums a tune, but the player doesn't catch it). At one point, he actually quietly sings, "When Captain Gopher throws his mighty shield..." And yes, there's a small round shield lying next to him. While most of the heroes take down Flea and Weasel, and Shadowboxer takes on Gopher, Maker (remote-piloting a captured VIPER flyer bot since she's still in quarantine) smashes through a skylight and fires a missile at Pigeon. It's a 1 1/2d6 Penetrating RKA with +1 STUN Mod, and she rolls badly: 3 BODY and 12 STUN. Maker: Useless. However, Pigeon's armor fails the Activation roll, so she takes the full damage. Shadowboxer: (OOC) It's actually a good thing you rolled so low. We wouldn't want to bring a corpse back to the CDC. Seeing the drone attack and hearing the sound of combat from the room where Flea and Weasel were, Mink leaps into action. GM: She runs to the fire door, shoves it open, and runs outside. Nexus: Really? She's running away? GM: Yeah. Mink is definitely a "me first" kinda person. The injured and pissed-off Pigeon flies up to try ripping the flyer bot apart with her claws. She also rolls incredibly low, getting no damage past the bot's defenses. GM: That nice new paint job you gave it, though - she scratched that all up. Pops: We're painting our whole base with that stuff. I mean, look how well it protected the drone... Upset at the drone attacking Pigeon, Willard summons a rat pack and sends it up into the rafters to drop onto the drone, blinding it's cameras. But with the shrinker and mentalist down, Honey Badger runs into the factory proper and jumps up to grab Pigeon. Honey Badger: Do any of the rats come along for the ride? If so, I'll munch on them while I'm squeezing Pigeon. Because of the surprise attack taking down three Vermin so quickly, the heroes soon defeat the rest of them... GM: Well, Mink got away. Pops: Wait, didn't we have police and PRIMUS out there? GM: Oh, yeah. Forgot about them. Pops: But she's a martial artist, so she probably has a high DCV. Shadowboxer: Which won't help much against stun grenades. GM: So, all of Vermin were captured...

Part Two of Typhoid Dee: Maker's background was that she got her powers as an astronaut aboard UNTIL's Gateway space station after exposure to a solar flare or cosmic radiation or something similar. However, her powers were initially out of control, causing a major problem on the station that left at least one fellow astronaut apparently dead but, in the standard comic trope "nobody could have possibly survived that" which means that of course he survived it, and is now her nemesis. Her character sheet included Hunted: TBD (same origin), giving me free rein to name and create the Hunted. I ran her through a quick prequel scene detailing the incident above, with Russian cosmonaut Andrei Vyelov's spacesuit getting holed and him spiraling out of control into an atmospheric reentry while UNTIL was too busy trying to keep Gateway from suffering a similar fate. Back to the present, Maker (aka Li Jenkins) is running late to her regular weekly lunch with her overbearing Chinese mother. As Li is in the taxi enroute to Boston's Chinatown area, she phones mom (Dr. Hu Cheng) to let her know she's on her way. In the middle of the conversation, there is screaming and then the call is cut off. She tries calling back without success. Maker: How long is it going to take the cab to get there? GM: About ten minutes. Maybe five if you have one of those cab drivers who considers traffic laws as mere suggestions. Maker: Can I fly there faster? GM: You have a slot in your Multipower that lets you fly pretty fast. So yeah. You can get there in about a minute. Maker: I tell the cabbie to stop, throw some money at him, get out, duck into an alley. Turn on my cloak field and fly to Chinatown. GM: Are you doing anything else? Maker: Call the others and let them know somethings going on. GM: (to other players) Is anybody else going there? Shadowboxer (whose secret ID is a PI who also drives a cab to make ends meet): Well, my last customer just threw money at me and jumped out of the cab, so I'm free to head there! Maker arrives to find a badly scarred man holding her (unconscious) mother, and arguing with some black teen girl with wings. Another man is lying unconscious at the scarred man's feet. (He's a good Samaritan who unsuccessfully tried to stop the scarred man from grabbing Dr. Cheng.) GM: The guy holding your mom looks like someone tried to light his cigarette with a flamethrower. Any skin showing is covered with really nasty burn scars. Honey Badger: (sarcastically) Gee, I wonder who that could be? Maker (with "clueless" field fully engaged): I don't know, but I'm getting my mom away from him. The scarred man shoves the winged girl away from him as Maker closes in. GM: You notice that the winged girl has what looks like a cloud of airborne dust particles around her. When his hand touches her, you see all the dust particles light up briefly. Also, she appears to get a bit weaker, and his scars heal up a bit. Maker: Crap. I radio the others: Don't touch him! The winged girl (Pigeon) flips the scarred man off and begins flying away as Pops teleports Honey Badger to Chinatown, while Maker does a move-by grab on her mother, then flies her to safety. Pops: I normally bring the slowest person first, but I start with Honey Badger because I know I can leave him there safely while I get the others. Honey Badger runs up and punches the scarred man (Sushchestvo, aka Wight), knocking him back into some bystanders trying to run away from the scene. Since Honey Badger has pretty hefty Power Defense, Wight's damage shield Drain doesn't do much, but it does reduce HB's strength enough to make him lose a die of damage. Honey Badger: Does he say anything? GM: He's shouting in what sounds like Russian. Maker: I speak Russian. What is he saying? GM: He's using some rather inventive cursing. Something about Honey Badger's mother's sexual proclivities. Wight responds to this attack by grabbing the woman next to him and stealing most of her life energy. Honey Badger: Is there a mailbox, or a lightpole, or something like that I can use as a weapon? Malarky: It's a restaurant with outdoor seating. Tons of stuff to grab. GM: Yep, tables, chairs, big ol' umbrellas... Honey Badger. Umbrellas. Perfect. I grab one. Maker: You're going to pound him with that? Honey Badger: I'm gonna shove the umbrella up his a** and open it! Pops teleports Malarky in, who hits Wight with his "Wee Bit Pissed" spell. Malarky: That should make him drunk. Pops: He's Russian. Probably immune to alcohol. GM: If it was vodka, maybe. But Malarky uses Red Bull in his spell, so it still affects him. Nexus arrives with Circe, and notices two guys on the other side of the street who are looking in her direction. Honey Badger: Wonder why they're looking at you guys, instead of watching the fight. Circe: Maybe because we're hot! As more heroes arrive, the tide swiftly turns against Wight. Honey Badger rips the cloth off the umbrella to wrap up Wight, then begins squeezing him to keep him unconscious. Meanwhile, an older Chinese lady, comes running out of the restaurant. Chinese lady: Hey!!! You break, you buy! Honey Badger: (turns to Circe, who is wealthy) A little help here? I need an umbrella. An innocent bystander hears this and hands HB a small retractable umbrella. Honey Badger: I say thanks, stick it in the ass, and open it. Maker: Of the Chinese lady?!?! Honey Badger: (incredulously) Noooooooo. Of the bad guy. The heroes are discussing what they're going to do with the Russian, who Maker now recognizes as Andrei Vyelov. Honey Badger: (to Pops) Can you teleport him back to Russia? Circe: Do you really want to turn him over to the Russians? Honey Badger: Why don't we put him in bed with Putin? Malarky: I can make 'em both a Wee Bit Pissed... The heroes reluctantly turn their foe over to PRIMUS, while Maker changes back to secret ID and takes her mother home to recover. GM: The Return Rate is per 5 minutes, so it'll take about an hour for all the stats he Drained to return. Even after that, though, your mom is still not feeling great. Maker: I call my dad and explain to him what happened. Let him know Mom's not feeling good, and to keep an eye on her. After Mr. Jenkins also begins feeling unwell the next day, it becomes apparent something is going on. The heroes learn that the woman Wight touched last is also sick, as are a few people in Honey Badger's apartment building. Maker: I touched my mom. Am I feeling sick? GM: You have a slight headache. That's about it. Maker: Wonder why I'm immune? GM: You're not. You have 5 points of Power Defense, and it's a 1d6 Drain. It's only getting a little bit through every now and then. Honey Badger: That's why it's not affecting me at all. I have 15 points. GM: You also have Life Support: Immune to Disease. That might help, too. The CDC quarantines everybody affected at the restaurant (including Maker, in secret ID). The heroes think the disease came from Wight, but are surprised to learn that he is also sick. Honey Badger researches Pigeon and learns that she does have some sort of mild toxic aura around her, but it just causes minor respiratory problems that clear up shortly after you move away from her. GM: Odd thing, the guy that tried to stop Wight from taking Maker's mom recovered all his lost characteristics and isn't sick at all. Nexus: Why's he immune? He was touched by Wight as well. Malarky: (light bulb goes off) Because he was affected before the Russian touched Pigeon. Shadowboxer: When he touched Pigeon, his damage shield must have somehow mutated her disease and made it deadlier.

From last night's adventure (Typhoid Dee) in my Champions game (Part One): Pre-game, Circe was jokingly complaining about last session's fight at her nightclub. Malarky: (OOC) I thought we warned you -- if you tell (GM) that your character owns someplace, it's almost guaranteed there will be a fight there. GM: Didn't you notice, when you gave me Circe's backstory, and it included the nightclub, and your condo's location, and your mom's place, that I chuckled a lot? FYI: Circe's player provided a very detailed background that involved her grandmother Marie (herself a mentalist and a leader of a group known as the Sisterhood) making a deal with an unidentified "powerful mentalist" -- he and Marie's daughter Hanna would bear two children, one female and one male. (One of the Sisterhood could manipulate things to ensure the gender of each child.) Hanna would raise the girl, and the father would raise the boy. However, after the first child (Circe, aka Ana) was born, Marie and Hanna refused to complete the deal by producing the male mentalist's heir. Thanks to the Sisterhood, he didn't have much choice but to accept this and walk away. Ana / Circe didn't necessarily know all of this info, though she was aware of the Sisterhood. The background also mentioned that her grandmother died when Ana was about 8 years old. And Circe's Complications included that she is Watched by her father (More Powerful). Cue the GM machinations. GM: And speaking of your condo, we're going to start Circe, or rather Ana, off there, sleeping peacefully one night... She wakes up to find a man leaning against her bedroom door frame, smoking a cigarette. He introduces himself as Joseph Ryan, her father (whom her mother had said died when Ana was an infant). Ryan assures her he means her no harm, and says that Ana's mother (Hanna) and grandmother (Marie) kept him from seeing her. Ryan: Even though your mother kept you from me, I kept tabs on you growing up, but I did miss out those things a dad gets to do, like watching his baby sleep. So I hope you'll forgive me for watching you sleep just now. Circe: (OOC) The first thing I do? Pull the covers all the way up to my neck. Circe tries using her Telepathy (invisible to mental) to read his mind. Note that all of her mental powers are in a pair of multipowers, and all are bought with the Unified Power limitation. GM: Two things. First, you can tell that your Telepathy is greatly reduced in power. In fact, all of your mental powers are down about 30 points, and you can feel them slowly but surely getting weaker. Secondly, when you try to read his mind, you get nothing. He's like a psionic void. Circe: This is not good! Ryan, by the way, is the psionic assassin Krait from Blackwyrm Games' rather excellent Algernon Files. Ryan: I also never got to tell you bedtime stories growing up, so please indulge me while I tell you one now. Long ago, there was an evil queen, Queen Marie, who was also secretly a witch, leader of a coven of witches known as the Sisterhood. Queen Marie made a deal with young, handsome Prince Joseph (bows slightly), offering a few nights' time with her beautiful daughter, Princess Hanna, with the goal of producing two heirs. The daughter would be raised by Queen Marie and Princess Hanna, and then a son would be born and raised by Prince Joseph. However, after the lovely Princess Ana was born, Queen Marie told Prince Joseph that she and Hanna weren't going to honor the rest of the deal. Since Prince Joseph was still young and not as skilled as he would one day become, and the evil queen had the backing of her coven of witches, there was nothing he could do but walk away. But Prince Joseph trained, honing his skills and powers, and one day he returned. He snuck into the castle late one night and slew the evil Queen Marie in her bed. Circe: But... why? Ryan: Because she reneged on their deal. It was... unprofessional. GM: (OOC) He says that as if being unprofessional is a worse crime than clubbing kittens, maybe even worse than murdering infants. After he finished his twisted bedtime story, he tells Ana that he now plans to murder her mother Hanna for her part in backing out of the deal, and that he felt she should know the full truth of how she came to be. Ryan: I don't want to be one of those parents who puts his child into the middle of things, so you may feel free to tell your mother that I stopped by, and of course my plans for her. All I ask is that you stay out of things and let your mother and I settle our dispute ourselves. I would hate for you to get hurt in the crossfire. - - - - - - I then backtracked to just after the team's fight against Road Kill. Last session, the heroes discovered that Road Kill's new songs were somehow summoning Cthulhu-esqe horrors. GM: So, last time you guys destroyed the Flying Polyp and captured the members of Road Kill. Honey Badger: And I got an autographed guitar! GM: Yes, you did. However, how are you going to keep Road Kill from just playing these songs later and summoning more of those things? Malarky: The lyrics were basically incantations for a spell. If we can get them to change the wording, the spell won't work. (Note that Malarky is a fledgling mage.) Circe: (to Nexus, aka Isabelle, a musician) Does Izzy write her own music? Nexus: Yes. Circe: So she and Malarky can work together come up with new lyrics for the songs, and I'll use my cumulative Mind Control to put them into Heavy Metal's mind and make him think they were his idea. Honey Badger: Can you make them a limerick?

Unfortunately, no. There was a lot of interesting-looking stuff for which I could easily come up with in-game abilities. For instance, a bunch of old cameras, including one way-old accordion-style camera. A half-dozen walking canes (one creepy-looking one with the handle being an animal's hoof that would be an excellent focus for an evil wizard). Glass globe paperweights with things embedded within. That sort of stuff.

For Darla, I'd find some interesting non-combat ways to use the precog. For instance, she can direct a driver through the city in record time (making every green light, avoiding any construction or traffic blockages), and find that one car about to pull out of a parking space on a crowded city block. When the heroes show up at the sandwich shop, she already has their sandwiches and drinks ready, and it's exactly the sort of thing they'd have wanted, down to substitutions. ("Don't worry, I put honey mustard on it instead of mayo.") If the PCs don't have a team vehicle, Hero Stop could have a driver and vehicle on call. A nondescript, mildly beat-up looking older-model van driven by a guy who claims his cousin is a famous NASCAR or Indy-500 driver. Maybe he drives the heroes to a battle in between sandwich order deliveries. One idea I had but never used was having a badly dented but mechanically sound Yellow cab driven by a pretty knowledgeable guy with obvious Combat Driving skill. Just about every time one of the PCs hails a cab, they get him. However, if they look at the cabbie license, his name is different every time. One day, it might be an Indian name, another time Irish, a third time Arabic, etc. If they ask him his name, he'll say, "it's on the license" and point to it. Granted, a taxi wouldn't work for a larger group, but 3-4 people could fit.

She's a high school teacher. If being out of your mind isn't a job requirement, it happens on it's own within the first year on the job. NT: Completely shocking character cameos in the Captain America: Civil War movie.

I laughed so hard I couldn't finish reading it aloud. My daughter pointed out that it's an April Fools news item, to which I replied, "but... Florida!"

The Capacitance Auto Recharge (CAR-1800) battlesuit was Rudolph May's greatest creation. Using principles gleaned from writings by Michael Faraday, James Maxwell, and Nicola Tesla, plus a lot of trial and error, May was able to create a suit that drew all its power from the earth's magnetic field. True, his "collections antennae" are a bit unwieldy, and had to be mounted on the helmet to keep from interfering with the rest of the suit's electronics. So it shouldn't have come as a surprise when PRIMUS rejected his design out of hand. It also shouldn't have come as a surprise when his peers ridiculed his design. "Looks like you're suiting up to lead Santa's sleigh," joked one detractor (though to be fair, the magnetic collection apparatus does look a bit like reindeer antlers). Taking the name CARIBOO (yes, he spells it that way and yes, in all caps), May decided to prove his battlesuit's capabilities against the Russian military. (May grew up during the Cold War and still sees Russia as a greater enemy to the US than any other.) And to be honest, the CARIBOO battlesuit is pretty capable. In addition to increased strength and a magnetic repulsion field for defense, it can fly, operate underwater, and even go into space. Riding the earth's magnetic waves, he can travel quite quickly, though he can only reach mach speed by following isolines of magnetic inclination. Offensively, in addition to the battlesuit's enhanced strength, the "antlers" can generate a electromagnetic blast that, though limited in range, is relatively powerful.

My wife and I drove up to Michigan's upper peninsula (Houghton, to be specific) to move our daughter back home for the summer after her first year as a university student. Found ourselves with a few hours to kill Friday, and headed to Houghton's mall to wander around. Not many stores open there at all, and of those one was a consignment store and another sold secondhand curios. Note that my daughter is a big fan of the former SyFy show Warehouse 13. (If you're not familiar with it, the main characters traveled all over collecting powerful artifacts to lock them away so they wouldn't endanger innocents. Stuff like Edgar Allen Poe's pen, binoculars used to view the Hiroshima explosion, etc.) Wife: (pointing to curio shop) Let's go in there. Daughter: No way! That place looks like "artifact central." Wife: (turns toward the consignment store) Okay, then we'll check that place out. Daughter: Nope. A place like that is bound to have an artifact or two lying around! Me: What, you don't want to play with an artifact? Daughter: Right, dad, cuz that always ended so well for the people who did it in the show. We did end up going through the curio shop, with her and I speculating on what the various things there would do as artifacts.

Here's an example -- Factory Recall (from the Corporate Raiders group in the Villain Theme Teams thread): Background: Ohshitohshitohshit, thought Paul Fraser as he darted between factory buildings, trying to get out of sight of the guards who had already roughed up most of Paul’s coworkers. He didn’t know why he had let John and George talk him into picketing the Duchess Industries plant to protest unsafe work conditions. I’m just some poor schmuck trying to work my way through community college, he thought as he tried one locked door after another. Why couldn’t I get a full-ride scholarship like Tom? Then I wouldn’t even be here, I’d be off studying at MIT or CalTech. Oh, that’s right; I don’t have a rich, connected daddy to pull strings for me. He was nearly to the back of the factory grounds when he found an unlocked door; he was just pulling it open when one of the guards rounded the corner and spotted him. Paul ignored the guard’s shouted order to stop and darted inside. Never been in this building before, he thought as he ducked under a conveyor belt and moved quickly past several large automated assembly robots, all standing silent and unmoving. Winded, he stopped behind a rather tall assembly line robot to catch his breath when he heard the outside door slam open, followed by distant conversation. Gotta find someplace to hide and wait ‘em out. He was just about to move deeper into the factory when he noticed the large hinged access panel on the back of the robot he was hiding behind. Paul cautiously opened it to reveal a padded space inside, large enough for a man. Ask, and ye shall receive. Paul smiled and climbed inside. As soon as the access panel clicked shut behind him, the robot around him automatically hummed to life. A half dozen rectangular LED screens in front of Paul lit, showing views from all angles (including behind and above). As he stared at the screens, a voice (sounding strangely like Arnold Schwarzenegger) began speaking. “Cyberdyne Systems Series 500. Bootup Complete. All Systems Nominal. Power At Optimum Levels.” Paul tried to shush the voice in case it was audible outside the robot, but it continued after only a slight pause. “Neural Link Failed. Neural Parameters Not On File For Current Operator. Diagnosis: New Operator. Scan Commencing.” A high-pitched hum began, and Paul felt something similar to a low-voltage electrical current running through his body. Outside the robot, he heard a shout and knew his pursuers had heard the hum and were on their way. “Neural Link Established.” Paul was wondering exactly what that meant when he saw four guards moving along the assembly line, all with guns in hand. Oh, crap, they‘re gonna kill me! Panicking, Paul thought about running for it… and the robot stood, brushed aside the conveyor belt as if it was a collection of Tinkertoys, and began running away from the armed men. They responded by opening fire, the bullets bouncing harmlessly off the outer shell. What is this thing? With that thought, one of the screens began displaying schematics of the… no, Paul realized, it wasn’t a robot. More like a mini-Mech, he thought as he checked out the various systems available. Repulsion jets. Gripper arms. Sensors galore. Even an ion blaster. Damn, Paul, you hit the jackpot. Wonder if the other ‘robots’ are like this thing. He stopped and picked up one of the other factory robots – it felt light as a toy – and studied it. Nope, just a normal assembly line robot. He tossed it at the thugs, more to get them to scatter and stop firing than to hurt them, and then turned toward the exterior wall of the factory. Moments later, as the mech-driving college student / factory worker smashed through the cinderblock wall and flew off, one of the guards grabbed his radio. “This is Brubaker. Get the Nest Leader out to the Duchess factory, pronto. Someone took the Sea Snake prototype.” Quote: “Threat level high. Initiate primary offense protocols.” Personality: Paul Fraser is a bit of an engineering nerd, and a gaming one at that. As such, he tends to look at most situations from a tactical, problem-solving viewpoint. Unlike the stereotype, however, he does just fine socially. He was raised in a good family in a working-class home and has long felt that the rich behave as if the world is theirs to do with as they please. Their sons and daughters can cheat on tests with impunity or even fail outright and still get into the best schools, while working-class schmoes like him have to scrape by on the scraps the wealthy discard. Because of this attitude, he looks at the Recall armor as his tool to take the entitled snobs down a few pegs. As he likes to say, “Finally, the poor and oppressed have someone on their side.” As Factory Recall, Paul likes to talk and act like a robot. His voice is run through a filter and comes out the external speakers sounding very robotic. This irritates some of his teammates (particularly Union), but Paul figures it disguises the fact that there actually is a person inside there. He’s convinced that one day, acting like a robot will save his life or help him avoid capture. Knowing that VIPER would love nothing better than to steal back the armor, Paul has made copies of Factory Recall’s schematics and other electronic files and has been stealing materials and parts during various team raids. He’s already about 2/3 of the way through building a duplicate mech, just in case. Powers/Tactics: Even though he has a ranged attack (the ion blaster mounted on the right forearm), Factory Recall tends to stick to HtH combat if possible. His signature move is to grab a foe with his Gripper Arms and then repeatedly punch or otherwise beat the individual into La-La-Land. Against a particularly tough foe, he’ll grab and then try a Hydraulic Boosted Haymaker punch (doing 18d6). However, he won’t do this unless he knows the foe has very high defenses. If fighting in a location owned by a large corporation or somebody wealthy, Recall loves to cause as much collateral damage as possible. So if, for instance, he grabs a superhero, he might use that hero as a club to smash walls, factory equipment, expensive cars, and so on. Or he’ll smash through a wall even though there’s an open door a handful of meters away. The mech’s computer monitors the operator’s vital signs and responds automatically with stimulants or painkillers to any signs of operator fatigue or minor injury. (Hence the increased REC, END, and STUN.) Note that it can operate nearly as well in or out of the water, and has both protection from and the ability to detect psionic activity. Appearance: Paul Fraser is tall (just over 6 feet) and skinny, with often-unruly medium-length blond hair and inquisitive blue eyes. He almost always dresses casually, in blue jeans and t-shirts that often have amusing sci-fi-ish sayings or pictures on them (e.g. “Welcome to Washington DC – Where You’re Safe from the Zombie Apocalypse” with a drawing of a confused-looking zombie saying “Brains???”). The Factory Recall armor looks much more like a somewhat large autonomous robot than a battlesuit – it doesn’t have a head, per se, and the operator’s arms and legs don’t even go into the corresponding limbs on the armor. It is normally 3m tall but can extend arms and legs to stand up to 7m high. It has four arms – two semi-normal-looking arms attached at the shoulders, and a pair of articulated gripper arms attached at the waist that fold up when not in use. The pop-up blaster is usually kept concealed in its compartment in the right primary arm’s forearm until needed. Campaign Use: Factory Recall is a fairly decent brick with a pretty extensive group of enhanced senses and the potential do deal out a lot of damage if necessary. With VIPER hot on his heels trying to steal the armor back, he can easily appear without the rest of the Raiders, being Hunted by the Goons in Green. To make him more powerful, increase his defenses and STR, and maybe add a few dice to his Hydraulic Boost. Some more Combat Skill Levels would come in handy, too, as would a Killing Attack (either a cutting laser or a bladed claw would fit well). If too powerful for your game, drop the Hydraulic Boost and Gripper strength, as well as his base PD and ED. Removing 360-degree on All Senses and dropping an Enhanced Sense or two would help make him a bit more vulnerable to sneak attacks.

Keeping in mind that I typically run Champions games, so the characters I create are usually the NPC villains... I often provide Background in story format, which often establishes a "voice" for the character. So yes, it often covers Personality and Quote fairly well. However, when the Background is less story-like, those sections are more necessary. Powers/Tactics often covers a few favored specific powers and how the character uses them. Also how the character might deal differently with ranged and HtH combatants. Personality highlights things that didn't come up in the Background, or motivativations that have arisen since the origin. When I write up Appearance, it frequently covers how the character looks outside his/her hero/villain ID. It also may include accents, odors, or other things that won't show up in a picture. Campaign Use covers the character's role in a team, as well as how to increase or decrease his/her power levels for different campaigns.

What if one used thicker paper?